“The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond” starts with Violet on her last day of elementary school, fretting about the unpromising summer looming in front of her. Her best friend is going to Greece. Her big sister, Daisy, is wrapped up in her boyfriend.

But Violet’s mom promised that she could have a kitten, so maybe life won’t be completely dull in Moon Lake, the vanilla bedroom community where she lives in Washington state.

Moon Lake is vanilla in more ways than one. Violet is the one of the only people of color in her community. Her father was African-American, so she is “brown haired, brown eyed, brown skinned, biracial.” She “sometimes feels like a single fallen brown leaf atop a blanket of fresh snow. Alone.” She doesn’t like the question in people’s eyes when they see her with her white mother, grandparents and sister.

Violet’s curiosity begins to build about her black relatives. Her paternal grandmother has been estranged from the family following the death of Violet’s father in a car accident. But when Violet tracks down that grandmother online, she decides that she wants to meet her, a decision that nearly blows up in her face.

Thanks to her supportive family, and a fair measure of bravery on Violet’s part, she not only meets her grandmother, but is invited to visit the home and studio that her grandmother keeps in California. It is a week of dizzying firsts — first time away from home and family, first time on an airplane, first time at a Baptist church, first sample of soul food, and more. The boring summer that Violet feared evaporates as she embraces a new world. It’s not perfect. There’s that tension between her grandmother and her mother. And Violet has a cousin who sneers at her for being biracial:

“The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond” is a deceptively simple story. Woods tackles tough questions head-on. Violet is an easy-going, likable girl, with the sort of questions that other mixed-race children her age might have.